Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to let it continue or you rip the feature away and anger users (who you then point to the EU as the problem)

It's not as if Apple doesn't have the money to dedicate a team to matching the EU's requirements on a deadline. They just choose not to.

I understand Apple's position on this one. This is essentially a backdoor into all of your data. It is also a very useful feature. The EU regulators are disallowing guardrails without which this backdoor will be used to strip-mine people's personal data. The privacy implications are not legible to most people.

If I was more cynical I would suggest that this is being used as an end-run around encryption, since the encryption doesn't have backdoors for the government but this gives you access to all the same data.

When this backdoor is inevitably exploited in some very public fashion, it won't be the EU regulators that required the backdoor to exist who will be blamed.

While I can sympathize with the desire for interoperability (I too pine for the days of Adium/Pidgin), the EU’s approach to all of this feels needlessly and potentially harmfully heavy-handed.

They basically make it an existential risk to build your success on anything nicely and neatly tightly vertically integrated. Everything must be dragged down to mediocrity by the unavoidable slippage between mandated abstraction layers and avoidance of features that can’t be easily or safely generalized.

It’s conflicting. Is Apple abusing its role in some cases, such as the App Store, and in need of some reigning in? Sure, but some of this goes too far and essentially requires them to strip their products of a portion of their appeal.

Even more frustrating is that nobody seems to be willing to discuss the issue with any level of nuance. It’s nearly all binary EU good/Apple bad or the reverse.

I find it interesting that Apple prefers to fall behind in Europe rather than opening their platform a tiny bit.

It gives us European some opportunities. I have a side project at work that was heavily threatened by Siri’s new features. Now I feel more relaxed as Siri isn’t coming there anytime soon.

But overall I doubt we will replace Apple.

It's totally fine that Apple doesn't release this feature for EU customers. If they think they can still sell enough phones it's also fine I guess.

What's not fine, is to blame the EU for the missing feature. It's damaging their brand and damaging their reputation. Just think about if Porsche would make a press release and calling the US tariffs "un-American". Wouldn't be perceived well either.

In a circle of irony, reuters.com is denying my request to read the article about Apple deciding to deny rolling out Siri in EU due to being denied their request for an exemption to law

    Access Denied
    
    Our apologies, the content you requested cannot be accessed.

I'd rather have my iPhone turn into a dumbphone than EU bow to the Megacorps.

Why is there so much talk about privacy here? The DMA is an antitrust framework,the privacy argument is just the Apple spin of their refusal to comply

Good for the total of eight users that will then use an alternative agent once it landed. Similar to the twelve people that use alternative app stores.

> EU regulators on Tuesday slammed Apple

This reads more like a tabloid headline than the first sentence of a Reuters article.

Good.

EU has the right to privacy.

Apple also has the right to not conduct business in EU.

If EU doesn’t like it, they can build their own sovereign software.

I really don't get why this wasn't a requirement that was baked in since the beginning.

Apple must know that they have customers in EU countries..?

Revenge for killing Lightning port!

Does not address Apple’s specific allegation, that the EU demanded that competing AIs have direct systemwide access to all apps and data, while Apple wanted to add an intermediation layer which Siri or competitors would plug into, and which would force the same level of user visibility (a popup at the top) over any AI’s behavior.

I don’t know why the EU allowed Apple to intermediate other browser engines with BrowserEngineKit, which is unacceptable, while blocking it here where it is reasonable.

What could Apple/Siri be asking for an exemption from that Google/Gemini has already complied with? Accessing iCloud photos to edit them? Parsing email etc?

What is the countdown to Germans outraged when someone from outside the EU is walking down the street and catches a fleeting audio clip of them which is processed by Apple's AI?

Does this mean the service will not be available to EU accounts, or will they geoblock access from within the EU altogether?

Of all the crimes Big Tech is committing against humanity, Apple's attempt to safeguard user privacy is the one the EU cannot abide?

Whatever, this is why while I like some of their technology, I don't support spoiled brat behaviour with big margins.

It would be nice if Europe had companies innovating at this level but it’s not happening. If you make a list of tentative companies that would integrate their stuff to the OS like Siri it’s very likely all those are major US companies, so I don’t even know at this point what the EU is trying to defend here.

All I know is we are buying the same devices designed by the US but keep increasing the list of features we can’t enjoy.

Interesting how the "groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute" cannot rollout due to privacy laws

Seems like a win for everyone.

yeah, we are talking about giving random apps gain full control over your whole damn phone and every file in the filesystem.

If I were apple i'd want to give people enormous amounts to tools to control that access. Specific popups whenever it tries to access data (for the first time) from any given app. OpenAI would like access to all of your text messages, yes/no. I'd also want audit logs etc.

The nightmare is facebook (or the like) releasing an ai model into the current facebook app and forcing people to decide between looking at their grandkids pictures or allowing facebook to read your whole damn life into a database. So perhaps these apps need to be mandated as a connector for Apple Intelligence and nothing more.

I mean if you decide you want to give access to Google to everything on your phone, go for it. So far I trust apple, they haven't let me down yet. Placing these models on hardware is a great trust-building feature.

Does this affect users that have a primary address in the EU or anyone with a phone that is _in_ the EU?

What does it even mean to "roll out in EU"?

These concepts are so outdated it's not even funny. Let's say I have several citizenships, live mostly in the EU, but currently stay in Japan, do I get the features or not?

Like app store regional gating and DVD regions, these restrictions are dinosaurs of the past.

It's all bullshit anyway. Apple could design a privacy framework around a fully integrated AI subsystem, "Do you want to allow ChatGPT access to Mail? (Developer message:) ChatGPT can read your emails to help summarize your inbox, or compose new mail."

This privilege system already exists. This is just marketing.

There is a widespread expectation here in the EU that every vendor in the world wants to access the common market and thus will accept any regulations and limitations that come with it.

Given that our share of global GDP has dropped from 25 to 17 per cent in twenty years, with a steady downward trend, I am not convinced that this principle will hold for much longer, and this case of Siri may be one of the canaries in the coalmine.

If/when we drop to single digits, many vendors won't likely care anymore.

There is a way to implement this functionality in an interoperable way that complies with the DMA. Apple just chose not to. Not because it's impossible to implement it in a privacy-respecting way, it just wants to lock people into their ecosystem, the exact thing DMA is protecting users against.

Apple realized its standard malicious compliance playbook won't fly this time, so now they're trying to sway public opinion by not rolling out this feature in the EU. It won't work. They're just going to lose market share and will have to backtrack when they do. Tech regulation doing its job.

That's fine, good actually. I wish these companies would go further tbh.

Like when the UK banned encryption I wish Apple would have just disabled iMessage entirely there. Show a message saying that due to UK law, they cannot operate an encrypted messaging service there any longer. The backlash would get that law changed pretty quick.

Instead they disabled encryption for the UK, making all of us less secure.

Apple stock is down more than 4% right now. That is a big dump for such a blue chip stock. IDK if it is due to this EU ban or Apple choice of going with Gemini (instead of making their own models).

I wonder how ChatGPT or Claude are actually GDPR compliant, but Apple has problems with Siri.

The EU is only interested in interoperability and centralization of data so they can put their citizens under surveillance. I hope Apple continues to exit this market on the edges.

Good. I wish the US had some privacy regulations as well. I can't believe how much credit folks are still giving Apple after all the BS they pulled (I mean direct Ad revenue is a $9 billion (and growing) business for Apple, and that's just the stuff they make public, not including search share revenue and other such deals).

Apparently their "Verifiable Transparency" claim just means Apple invited unnamed outside security experts and independent researchers to inspect and verify the integrity of (what they claim to be) its Private Cloud Compute code... LOL :)

I'll believe it when I can run the "private cloud compute" on my own hardware that I can firewall in my rack and monitor its network outputs.

Apple is right, EU wants to live in the stone age because of these laws, let them.

Even when Siri AI is using a locally installed LLM (with optional cloud models with E2EE), the EU still decides that it is not even enough.

This is why the EU is destined to lose and run itself to zero.

This is imperialism mentality, there are much divide in US politics and society but they seem to agree on trying to dominate and berate the UE in particular. I see it displayed even among progressive commentators it doesn't surprise me it is also reflected among progressive companies. But as soon as it comes to Trump or to China then it is not the same rethoric, stance, rashness at all. This selected stances and courages don't impress me at all. I also don't have much sympathy for Europe here, i guess Europe got what it deserves when you accept and do nothing to escape the fate to be a vassal you are rightfully treated like a vassal, nothing more.

Apple tries to market its product as privacy-focused, yet the privacy of their new AI features is so bad they don't meet EU standards? Is that the message here?

So, first they have to be regulated because Apple and Android form a duopoly. Then they want to get an exception that the other duopoly player does not get.

Of course, as usual they use their PR machine to blame the EU, whereas they really just want to abuse their platform's position to shut out competitors.

I have been a decades long Apple user, but their anti-competitive behavior, pushing ads into the OS and apps, and their treatment of developers (who made the iPhone big) is just gross.